NYC passes POST Act, requiring police department to reveal surveillance tech
venturebeat.com
venturebeat.com
How is this even a thing? I don't know much about the US political system but how is it that the police is not entirely subjected to civic government and why does a law need to be passed to control what the NYPD does?
Look up the open justice initiative in California.
You’d think we as a society figured out hosting costs ...
Any quote on what the cost of hosting is and if it can be crowd funded? Technically speaking, their whole institution is crowd funded so I don’t know where they get the autonomy to decide jack shit.
The separation of powers in NYC/NYS is very messy so this doesn't surprise me.
The police union, however, is a very organized labor union, and the current mayor was brought to heel even though he was elected on the most anti-police platform of his first election.
Take the NYPD's use of proprietary "predictive policing" algorithms to identify where a crime may occur and identify individuals who may be a perpetrator.
These algorithms have long been feared to express the biases of their input data. [1]
The NYPD has obstructed freedom of information requests at every turn. They wouldn't even release their correspondence with the vendor because it "would reveal trade secret information." [2]
If we can't examine it or even know how it's being used, it's significantly more difficult to scrutinize.
[1]: https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessm...
[2]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/cour...
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.”
— https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
In other words, the police, like essentially every other organization, is trying to preserve itself and expand itself. It only aligns with the wishes of another organization, e.g. “the tax collector”, as far as it serves their own goals, either because it furthers their goals directly, or if the other organization is in a position to threaten their own goals of preservation and expansion.
https://gizmodo.com/nycs-free-wifi-service-is-turning-into-a...
https://cryptome.org/2016/06/linknyc-spy-kiosks-installation...
https://theintercept.com/2020/05/08/andrew-cuomo-eric-schmid...
“This is a partnership, not a contractual relationship.” [1]
"Because of partner relations and legal authorities, SSO Corporate sites are often controlled by the partner, who filters the communications before sending to NSA." [2]
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/us/politics/att-helped-ns...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/08/15/us/documents....
This is a good step, but I am curious - how much are these laws enforceable? I was just reading that some Atlanta cops are not reporting to work - protest for the arrest of the cop who shot Rayshard Brooks. If that is the mentality, how much cooperation can we expect? Not talking about this particular NYC law, just in general.
Beyond that, though, painting an entire profession as monsters is simply wrong.
Be careful what you wish for--it appears that an upswing in resignations is happening now.
Asking people to act to professional standards and holding them to those standards isn't painting them as monsters nor does it seem unreasonable.
However, the question is whether the reason you mention is a valid one. I believe a better one is that police officers stay home when they are supposed to work. In which kind of profession do you not get fired when you refuse to (show up on) work? Especially when there is unrest and violence on the streets, you are more in demand; your services are needed even more. In such times, staying home is akin to being a deserter in time of war.
I do not understand how one gets away with that. How do they? What is their leverage?
A taser is considered a deadly weapon under GA law and the DA had charged other officers a few weeks ago with using a taser as a deadly weapon. Now he is saying its not a deadly weapon when stolen and used against them, and didn't warrant deadly force to be used in return. He also didn't even wait for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's report with the facts on the shooting.
That's why the police walked out. Form all account's I have seen so far, that officer seems to have followed that department's use of force continuum guidelines correctly and GA law but was still charged for seemingly political points by a DA who is up for re-election. You're not going to get cooperation when cops feel that they have done everything according to policy/state law and can still get charged because an angry mob demands it.
Here is a breakdown from a former police officer who dives into it a little further: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5QEnGkIbzA
Also we would expect any regular citizen to be arrested and charged in this situation. That's precisely what courts are for - to sort out whether the details are strong enough to warrant conviction. Police should not have some informal parallel justice system outside of the courts - that's the whole point.
From everything I have seen the cop was justified by law. Still a shitty situation but this smells of politics by the DA.
Edit: forgot to mention that Tennessee vs Garner established that officers have justification to use deadly force to stop someone fleeing who is a deadly danger to the public.
This is a good example of why responding officers shouldn't carry firearms or even tasers on their person - they're too quick to keep escalating like they see on TV. If a suspect violently escapes arrest, then send in a larger armed crew with a deliberate plan.
re your addition: Seems like a decision that enables bad policing. Nothing about the situation makes it seem like RB was actually a danger to the public, but the police will push that justification all day long to legitimize what was essentially a personal ego escalation.
As this is not a clear cut case of justifiable homicide, the right thing to do is let a court sort it out. If the courts are too slow and expensive, welcome to another broken aspect of the criminal justice system that is in dire need of reform!
To all New Yorkers: You are currently NOT ENTITLED to see the methods and techniques taught at the NYPD academy.
Requests are being denied on these grounds: "Deniable records include records or portions thereof that: (e) are compiled for law enforcement purposes and which if disclosed would: iv. reveal criminal investigative techniques or procedures, except routine techniques and procedures;"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Killing#The_problem_of_non-...
Examples of targets being marketed to law enforcement:
http://www.americantargetcompany.com/law_enforcement_targets...
https://www.amazon.com/law-enforcement-target/s?k=law+enforc...
Police deal with violent criminals who have no regard for police life; in fact often they are explicitly against police. They're going to learn techniques appropriate for dealing with such people. Some of those techniques will be violent and resemble "military" tactics, but that's only because the military also deals with violent adversaries.
> Methods: Ten years of data were extracted from Dallas Police Department records. LEOs who were involved in a shooting in the past 10 years were frequency matched on sex to LEOs never involved in a shooting. Military discharge records were examined to quantify veteran status and deployment(s). Multivariable logistic regression was used to estimate the effect of veteran status and deployment history on officer-involved shooting involvement.
> Results: Records were abstracted for 516 officers. In the adjusted models, veteran LEOs who were not deployed were significantly more likely to be involved in a shooting than non-veteran officers. Veterans with a deployment history were 2.9 times more likely to be in a shooting than non-veteran officers.
> Conclusions: Military veteran status, regardless of deployment history, is associated with increased odds of shootings among LEOs. Future studies should identify mechanisms that explain this relationship, and whether officers who experienced firsthand combat exposure experience greater odds of shooting involvement.
“ A defence attorney for Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, says he fired in self-defence because police did not announce themselves and that he believed they were breaking in to the home.”
The police did a no-knock raid unannounced on the wrong home, then shot EMT Brianna Taylor 8 times. Those violent techniques are at issue here. They seem to be violations of 5th and/or 14th amendment rights and clearly not appropriate.
https://lailasnews.com/international/brianna-taylor-death-br...
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Breonna_Taylor
I’m sucker for true crime, so I watch a lot of interrogations. There are very specific tactics that are used to psychologically build up egos, barrage an ego, frame things in different ways that absolve the perpetrator, standard god cop / bad cop, and so forth. Murder police do this with murder suspects. The thing is, murder police are super trained to deal with murders.
I think street beat cops are similar to script kiddies. They don’t understand infrastructure and networking, and mostly know code monkey usage of scripts. On small enough targets, you can start to believe you are king shit doing whatever you are doing.
Until it goes too far, and the big boys show up and assess you. That’s when we find out your script kiddie cops have little to no training on de-escalation, have little to no understanding of the community, think establishing authority and show of force in any situation is professional, think defending their ego in situations has a place, think bringing respect to the uniform in a literal ongoing situation that could turn sideways has a place, and so on.
That’s what we’re finding out, they are mostly amateurs. They are not super trained to deal with their job. Guy clearly drunk and asleep in a car? First time you’ve ever dealt with this? Ended in a fatality, eh?
Lots of training there going over that basic scenario ...
> Earlier this month, Howard charged six Atlanta police officers with using excessive force in pulling two college students out of a car during a protest. In justifying charges of aggravated assault against some of the officers, Howard said a Taser is considered a deadly weapon under Georgia law. [0]
Rayshard was also breaking Georgia DUI law by drinking in his parked car. He also likely drove there drunk, so investigating was ethical. Drunk driving kills over 10,000 people every year.
> Similarly, if the keys are in the ignition but the car is not yet turned on, this could be charged as a parked car DUI. Additionally, if the person is in the car, in the driver's seat, with the keys in their hand, but not in the ignition, this can be charged as a parked car DUI. [1]
[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/17/raysha...
This can’t be proved. I’ve poured a few shots into a drink and had it with my meal at fast food places plenty of times. He could have been drinking inside Wendy’s, easily. He could have gotten drunk, couldn’t walk to his sister’s place, decided to sleep some of it off in the car.
It’s hard to argue if there is a rejection of the need for nuance and that situations fall on a spectrum.
The law is the law until we see it a little bit. If RB had priors and he was about to get a parked dui, that could be real jail time again, and a drunken person could easily react drunkenly.
Do you as a cop factor in the fragility of the situation or do you exact the law word for word, regardless of how much more dangerous the situation will get.
The RB situation is extremely complicated. I feel bad for the cops and don’t think they deserve felony charges. However, I do think the police department needs more rigorous training on dealing with common scenarios at a higher level.
I also don’t think RB needed to go to be cuffed that night, and needed a place to sleep it off like he suggested.
It’s sad all around.
He was passed out in his car in the drive thru lane. Did you even watch any of the videos? He was not cognizant for most of the video.
> I also don’t think RB needed to go to be cuffed that night, and needed a place to sleep it off like he suggested.
Riiiight...
[0] https://www.statista.com/chart/5211/us-citizens-killed-by-po...
In other countries like England & Wales, when a police officer seriously injures or kills someone, there's a formal investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct, an independent body at a centralised Government level with powers equivalent to a police officer for matters they investigate. They also usually provide public reports, for example, https://policeconduct.gov.uk/recommendations/police-response.... (Also note the limited use of force - two shots, one of which struck - and immediate care.) It's still not perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than what the US does.
All officer involved shootings are investigated, but you take issue with the investigation being internal. If an independent investigation office was created, would you accept the results if the results still were the same? What group, would you accept results from in independent office from as not compromised or part of a pro-police conspiracy? Certainly not any Trump appointed office, no matter how seemingly neutral.
Also, circling back - even if the police only killed violent people, my personal experience is that their interactions with the community are pretty much always to threaten violence - except for their attempts to indoctrinate children into accepting their presence. I've seen police break ribs and knock non-violent, merely uncooperative, people unconscious, then fail to provide healthcare. They've harassed and threatened people attempting to film them, including taking details and arresting people who refuse to provide them. There was a spate where they arrested random people on my street for no stated reason, then released them just before they had to explain to a judge why they were arrested. Just because people don't die most of the time doesn't make them unaffected.
No-knock night raids should probably be considered a violation of the 2nd Amendment, among other things. Kenneth Walker was well within his rights to shoot the plainclothes cops breaking into his home in the middle of the night.
Regardless, even if the police killed some 1000 armed people during a year, so what? 1000 is certainly a tiny sub-1% fraction of total interactions. If anything, you're only supporting my assertion that the vast majority of people the police have to deal with are non-violent and can be dealt with using non-leathal force, or little to no force at all.
> The NYPD’s use of DAS is not restricted to suspected criminals or terrorists, and the collected data is retained for upwards of years.
This is concerning, too. I'd like to see some sort of federal requirement prohibiting agencies from storing data including metadata for excessive periods of time. I don't know what a reasonable limit would be but it should probably be on the order of months.
However it's curious that Microsoft isn't mentioned at all in the article - even though every inch of this abomination is entirely Microsoft's creation.
Im sure some companies wouldn't be to excited on having their tech publicly exposed.
Why do civilian lawmakers even need to pass laws for this?
The police should be reporting their technologies, their techniques, and their standard operating processes to a civilian oversight board.
Otherwise, the police are operating above the law.
Well, we already know that they do. But still, the police department must fall under legal civilian control.
Otherwise, you will end up with a militarized police system, that is accountable to no one but themselves. They end up becoming the foxes that guards the henhouse.
Most people can’t afford an attorney and end up taking a plea.
https://www.justia.com/criminal/procedure/search-and-seizure...
>A mistake of law by a police officer sometimes can trigger the exception. If an officer takes steps based on the existing interpretation of the law, but a court later rules that the law should be interpreted differently, they may be found to have acted in good faith.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/18/police-found...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=SECu1fR0dWE&t...